Citrus crop shrinks for second straight year

The smallest orange crop in 24 years is getting even smaller as citrus greening continues to ravage Florida groves.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture shaved 4 million orange boxes, or 3 percent, off the projected 2013-14 orange harvest this week in the first monthly update since its initial Nov. 8 forecast. The new estimate is 121 million boxes.

“It’s startling they took that many boxes off that quickly,” said Marty McKenna, a Lake Wales-based grower and chairman of the Florida Citrus Commission. “We’re having a rude awakening to the effects of citrus greening.”

The USDA report cites historically low fruit size and record high pre-harvest drop — both of which McKenna and other growers attribute to the millions of trees infected by the citrus greening disease — as reasons for the reduction.

“Current droppage, above the maximum and steadily increasing, is projected to be highest in the series dating back to 1960-61,” the report says. “Current size is below the minimum and projected to remain below the minimum at harvest.”

The new estimate is still above an earlier low orange crop of 110.2 million boxes harvested in the 1989-90 season.

But that came after the worst citrus freezes in the state’s history.

Six more months of harvesting remains in this season, and the numbers could still drop even more.

The USDA also reduced the projected 2013-14 Florida grapefruit crop by 1.1 million boxes, down 6 percent, to 16.7 million boxes and the estimated tangerine harvest by 4 percent to 3.6 million boxes.

Tangelos remained unchanged at 1 million boxes.

Greening is a bacterial disease that weakens a citrus tree and eventually kills it. It first surfaced near Homestead in 2005 and spread quickly throughout the citrus growing region.

Growers and scientists say they think most of the state’s 69 million citrus trees are infected with some estimates as high as 75 percent.

“Every (grove) block in the state is infected,” said John Barben, an Avon Park-based grower with groves across Central Florida. “I’m heartbroken.”

Until last season, many growers thought they could hold out against greening by going to monthly pesticide spraying to control the Asian citrus psyllid, the insect host for the greening bacteria and the primary cause of the disease’s spread.

Most growers also adopted an “enhanced nutrition” regime of additional fertilizer applications that appeared to keep infected trees healthy.

Both strategies appeared to minimize greening’s harmful effects until a year ago, when growers noticed their infected trees were dropping fruit before harvest at alarming rates.

The USDA forecast fell 13 percent during the 2012-13 season, an unprecedented amount for a season not affected by freezes, hurricanes and other weather issues.

The new USDA report and the return of pre-harvest drop has lowered many growers’ hopes that they can contain the disease, Barben and McKenna said.

“It is frustrating for all those growers who put in additional resources on spraying and enhanced nutrition in the hope they could control greening,” said Mike Sparks, chief executive at Florida Citrus Mutual in Lakeland, the state’s largest growers’ representative.

“I think this reflects the fact greening is a devastating disease, and we’ve got to roll up our sleeves and attack it.”

Growers are relying on scientists to come up with new measures to counteract the disease, McKenna said.

But Barben and McKenna agreed there are no new measures on the immediate horizon.

“It’s a daily frustration,” McKenna said.

The lower citrus harvest probably will result in higher farm prices to Florida growers for their 2013-14 fruit, said Tom Spreen, emeritus professor of agricultural economics at the University of Florida, and Matt Salois, chief economist at the Florida Department of Citrus.

“It’s hard to believe (farm) prices won’t be stronger this year,” Spreen said. “The fact that so much fruit came off suggests we’re going through the same thing (pre-harvest drop) as last year.”

Salois argued the falling crop numbers, particularly if they continue to fall next year, will create greater upward momentum.

“I think the overall impact will result in upward pressure on grower prices, potentially going up the supply chain to retail prices,” Salois said. “Taking 4 million boxes off a 125-million-box orange crop, that’s not untrivial.”

Last month, Salois projected an average farm price of $1.50 per pound solids for 2013-14 early and mid-season oranges, but a Citrus Mutual market report this week put the current cash price at $1.60.

Pound solids is a standard industry measure of the amount of juice squeezed from fruit.

The $1.60 price should hold until the end of the early-mid harvest in March and could possibly go higher, Salois said.

He also expected the average price for late-season Valencia oranges to exceed his earlier prediction of $1.76 per pound solids.

In November, Salois predicted the average retail price for orange juice would increase 1.5 percent in 2013-14 to $6.29 per gallon.